[Leaplist] Different netbooks ... CPU and GPU limitations (or not) ...

[Kevin Korb]

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I have 2 Atom based systems.  They have their uses but you are correct
about them being weak.

The first is my 10" EeePC with an Atom N270 (single core 1.6GHz).  I only
use it for IRC, email, web browsing, ssh, Audacious, and the occasional
classic arcade style game.  For those purposes it works decently.  The
crappy SSD that Asus ships is actually more limiting than the CPU is.  But
the CPU is still strong enough that things like disk encryption and
OpenVPN tunneling do not make a noticeable difference in performance
(probably because the SSD is only slightly faster than a thumb drive).
With my usage which generally involves both heavy wi-fi usage, encryption,
and music playing I usually get right at 4 hours of battery time.

The second is an Atom N230 (single core 1.6GHz) that I use as my
firewall/router.  It is in a phone book size box that has 2 PCI slots so I
had no trouble getting 3 NICs into it.  I don't use the video at all so I
could care less about the performance there.  I like the low power
consumption (about 1/3 of the power is used by the 2 PCI NICs I added).
It is faster than the old AMD K6-2 500MHz system it replaced while using
less than half the power so I am happy.

Frankly I can't think of anything else I would use an atom for.  If I
could get one that could handle a crapload of storage I might consider it
for a file server (sort of a DIY NAS) but none of them I have seen would
be capable of that.

I would like to try a newer Atom Z530 based system though.  Those are dual
core still 1.6GHz but they have some newer features like hardware
virtualization.  It is probably still wimpy but it may be well suited to
the low powered netbook market.  Were any of the ones you tested from the
Z series?

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:08:46 -0800 (PST)
"Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith at ieee.org> wrote:
> Okay, I've now had the chance to mess with various types of netbooks:  
> - Intel single/dual-core 45nm Atoms with the 65nm 965GSC
> - Intel single/dual-core, ultra-low voltage 45nm Pentium with same
> - AMD, single-core, low voltage 65nm Athlon 64 with 55nm M690E
> - AMD, single/dual-core, low voltage 65nm Neo [x2] with 55nm M780G
> 
> Let's get one thing straight, the 2-issue, in-line, non-speculative Atom
> sucks. You could quad core it and then you'll get what an aged AMD Neo
> does. Anything with an Atom is going to be CPU limited.  Ironically, the
> 965GSC makes a great partner for the Atom here.  The nice thing is that
> you do get 6 hours out of the sucker, and that should improve with Intel
> outsourcing to TSMC and their 40nm process for the GPUs.  I understand
> the reasons for Atom, but as they have existed so far, they make poor
> processor for a general purpose OS.
> 
> nVidia has introduced it's Ion chipset for Atom.  But adding a GPU to a
> processor that struggles with basic operations is not going to help much.
> As I said, the old 965GSC design is a perfect match.  ;)
> 
> Now, ironically, I've had the chance to mess with some of the nexgen,
> 45nm, ultra-low voltage Pentium processors, including dual-core.  Those
> actually have a bit of kick to them.  GHz for GHz, they will slump
> against AMD, but Intel has the power-GHz superior fab technology, so
> they come out ahead in both performance and battery life.  Almost makes
> you want to forget Atom, as they can give you 4 hours.  The pricing is
> the only problem at this point.
> 
> I haven't checked if nVidia has a solution for these ULV Pentium designs.
> If they use the same interconnect, they should.  I need to investigate
> further, but there are few netbooks in this area so far.
> 
> AMD has a problem.  They are still selling 2+ year-old technology, and
> we're still waiting for 45nm products to hit the market.  You have a
> choice of the low-voltage 65nm Athlon 64 or the optimized, but still
> aged 65nm Neo [x2] single/dual-core.
> 
> The Neo x2 is capable of keeping up with feeding the newer Radeon
> 2100-3200 GPU cores (M690x and M740x/780x), definitely bests the
> ULV Pentium dual-cores GHz for GHz, but at an extreme power penalty.
> So the power and cost savings with Neo [x2] over Turion [x2] is minimal,
> and yesteryear's refurbished models are the only affordable under $500.
> Same problem as the ULV Pentium on the pricing front (worse battery than
> it though).
> 
> Which brings us to the low-voltage Athlon 64.  Here you have a 1.2GHz
> Athlon 64, underclocked and power drops below 25W.  But then it can't
> feed even the old 2100 GPU core (shrunk to 55nm in the M690E).  I know,
> I just bought one.  It's great for normal usage, kicks the living crap
> out of a dual-core Atom (ignore the artificial benchmarks, I've used
> both myself on Linux and Windows), and then you have the GPU for
> off-load of things the 965GSC just can't do.  And that's the funny
> part.  You can jack up filtering, textures, etc... on that Radeon 2100
> GPU without hitting the CPU at all (unlike the feature-set in the
> 965GSC) -- "totally free."  But the GPU still can't drive/off-load the
> actual CPU operations, so if the CPU is hit hard (doing absolutely
> nothing to do with any 3D/rendering/playback), it doesn't matter.
> 
> AMD does this to get the CPU power consumption down, and battery life
> to 4-5 hours.  The chipset is already 10-15W at 55nm, and the new revs
> will go to sub-10W at TSMC's 40nm (although Intel's new use of TSMC as a
> foundry might get interesting on speed-to-market).
> 
> Now it's clear AMD took a major chunk of the market with the low-voltage
> Athlon+M690E combo.  Because _all_ of the Acer-Gateway and whitebox
> models I've seen lately are sporting a ULV Pentium Single/Dual-Core with
> an Intel chipset like the X3000/4000 series.  It's funny because that now
> reverses the problem (and even kills the battery a little bit more than
> AMD's aged solution).  The only AMD combos I can find are old models**.
> 
> AMD has a great GPU, but is either CPU-limited or power-limited (by CPU).
> 
> Intel has a great CPU (ULV Pentium), but is always ships a GPU clunker
> (in _real_ features, not those artificial "dumb framebuffer"
> benchmarks), let alone in Linux (where the Intel driver totally lacks IP
> features of their Windows counterparts -- ATI and nVidia offer a closed
> source driver for such).
> 
> So, in a nutshell, there's no happy medium right now.  Maybe Intel will
> stop fighting with nVidia and work with them for a combo to the ULV
> Pentium. Then again, pricing is still an issue -- and I hope AMD's new
> 45nm finally delivers what it should.  2GHz 45nm single-core performance
> of 4-5 hours with a 40nm M780G/T (Radeon 3100) or successor.  But right
> now it seems there's still a lot of old stock out there.
> 
> -- Bryan
> 
> **P.S.  With that said, I still just bought the older LV Athlon + M690E
> refurb combo for $270 from Woot.  The 1.2GHz Athlon 64 is capable of
> meeting requirements for a 2GHz Penitum 4, and -- again, it's funny --
> to jack up _all_ of the DirectX 9 / OpenGL 2.x features for shading and
> textures with the Radeon X1270 (2100) integrated GPU and it makes
> _no_difference_ in performance (because the GPU can handle them).  It's
> that CPU doing background stuff in a title that seems to hit any
> performance, not any rendering (the GPU is more than capable).  At least
> memory and disk are beyond the artificial XP netbook $5 pricing,
> although it ships Vista, I'm running Linux on it anyway.  ;)
> 


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	Kevin Korb			Phone:    (407) 252-6853
	Systems Administrator		Internet:
	FutureQuest, Inc.		Kevin at FutureQuest.net  (work)
	Orlando, Florida		kmk at sanitarium.net (personal)
	Web page:			http://www.sanitarium.net/
	PGP public key available on web site.
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